A $4Bn Consumer Durables Manufacturer

LP Lens – Linking Organizational Strategy to People

Business Issue

In 2013, two large North American consumer durables companies—Serta and Simmons—were merged to form a single $4B entity marketing two iconic brands across North America and globally.

A converged company strategy had been defined and an executive leadership team—headed by a new CEO from outside the industry—was being formed. The top four executives—the CEO, CFO, CHRO and CLO—would be responsible for a major cultural transformation with an end goal of an IPO within three years.

The new CEO needed to understand the strengths and abilities of each of the members of the new executive leadership team, their compatibility, and their combined ability to tackle the organization’s specific strategies, programs and operational requirements.

He also recognized that Serta-Simmons needed a fact-based, insightful approach to:

Build a powerful culture

Ensure that Serta-Simmons had the right people working on the right things

Build teams and ensure that they were aligned

On-board new people

Help their people grow

Enhance engagement

Solution

L&C, a North American Strategic Advisory Firm based in Canada, leveraged SuccessFinder to identify the executive competencies needed to execute on this ambitious strategy.

Together, they matched the competencies of individual team members to those needed for team and corporate success. They also provided a rich set of objective data for benchmarking existing and potential talent against external data resources.

The L&C/SuccessFinder team’s first undertaking involved re-vamping the role profiles of the top twenty positions in the company to reflect the new strategic plan, integrating the demands of the new corporate goals and objectives, and building in the competencies specific to the company’s circumstances.

The emerging competency requirements for each position represented a combination of those specific to the company’s strategy with the success profiles for companies of this type from the SuccessFinder database. This helped the CEO and CHRO to fill several critical executive positions, including those of CFO and COO.

About Serta Simmons Bedding

The company is North America’s largest supplier in the consumer durables sector, owning two iconic brands that have been in existence for well over a century. Serta Simmons Bedding 6000+ employees work in almost 40 locations in the US and Canada and have licensees across the globe.